


Campfire Camaraderie

by Huggle



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Angry Ethan Hunt, Cold, Gen, Stranded, august walker lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27015151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: Thanks to his new boss, Ethan is stranded somewhere dark and cold with instructions to keep August Walker alive.The IMF thinks they need him, that they can bring him into the fold.Ethan thinks it’s like trying to tame a pit viper but orders are orders.
Relationships: Ethan Hunt and August Walker
Kudos: 9
Collections: Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2020





	Campfire Camaraderie

A fire’s risky, and Ethan knows it, but he’s also pretty sure he took out the last of the Apostles pursuing them, so it’s a balanced risk.

Besides, the alternative to hypothermia out here is sharing body warmth and he’d honestly rather snuggle up to a pit viper.

Not to mention he’d probably wake up with a knife in his ribs...or, you now, not wake up.

He can tell Walker thinks the same thing, from the way he’s keeping one eye on Ethan and another on the darkness that’s so solid around them it might as well be a black wall.

“I’m surprised,” Walker says, finally. He leans back against the rock wall behind him, forearms resting on his knees. 

Ethan doesn’t answer him. He has no interest in any kind of conversation with this prick, polite or otherwise, and he’s still inwardly raging that their new boss decided bringing him along was a good idea.

Yes, he can identify the remaining Apostles. Yes, he has incentive to do so since a lot of them want him dead over Lane for which he is apparently being held to blame.

No, that doesn’t mean they can trust him, but still here Ethan is, temporarily stranded with the guy who planned to nuke millions to bring about world peace or some such bullshit.

“That you haven’t killed me already,” Walker goes on.

Ethan thinks about telling Walker that he’s surprised too. Orders are orders, and his are to make sure Walker survives this; the IMF clearly has some absurd notion to bring him into the family, turn him, but you can’t domesticate a venomous snake. 

But orders aside, by now Ethan had expected he’d have to kill Walker simply because the other man tried to kill him.

Maybe, on some level, Walker knows his chances are better with them than out there, no resources, no protection, and an infinite number of ruthless people hunting him down.

He might have been one of the CIA’s most ruthless assassins, but he’s still just one man, now marked.

Literally.

Ethan notices Walker makes sure to keep that side of his face turned away from the fire, from him.

He wonders if it hurts due to either or both.

“So. Should we tell each other ghost stories? Share our greatest triumphs? Our greatest regrets?”

“Or you could just shut up,” Ethan says, and almost feels the smirk on Walker’s face.

“I think you’ve got more than I have,” Walker says. “Regrets.”

Ethan turns to him, and this time Walker doesn’t look away. His face still looks like somebody took a blowtorch to it; part of his deal with them is that if he toes the line, stays honest, they’ll help fix him.

It won’t be perfect, not like before, but he’ll be in a lot less pain and he won’t look like something out of a cheap horror movie.

He almost feels a pang of guilt for that, almost, but it’s quickly smothered by the rage in Ethan, still, at everything Walker was going to do.

“I don’t know,” Ethan says. And, because maybe he’s done going high when others go low, “I manage to look myself in the mirror.”

Walker doesn’t say very much the rest of the night. 

There’s no need for creepy stories, that’s for sure, when the psycho who wanted to incinerate millions alive and create the greatest catastrophe in human history is sitting next to him, probably thinking just how close he came, and probably planning to do it all again.

Walker gives Ethan nightmares enough.


End file.
